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Katrina prompts charity not change
By Justin Webb
BBC, Washington
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans three weeks ago, the authorities were criticised for not doing enough for those least able to help themselves.
With the spotlight shining on the country's social and economic inequalities, our correspondent asks whether there will be pressure for change.
For millions of people on America's Gulf Coast it has been another miserable weekend, with Hurricane Rita tearing into buildings, snatching where it can at both property and life.
Three weeks ago I was in the Gulf states following Hurricane Katrina.
Speeding along a relatively unscathed motorway between the wonderfully exotic-sounding towns of Pascagoula and Biloxi, I switched on the car radio and heard the tobacco-stained drawl of a southern politician comparing the destruction in his district to that of Hiroshima.
Tasteless I thought. A typical example of American inability to see that suffering in other nations at other times dwarfs anything the average American ever sees.
Then we arrived in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The real question is whether there is going to be a revolution
There are streets where nothing stands, corners where one house or one wall has survived. Everything around it is matchwood.
The destruction is awe inspiring. After 10 minutes in the town, the Hiroshima comparison seems less jarring.
Reason for revolution?
Rita and Katrina have both been events of massive force, sweeping away an awful lot, but Katrina - because of the ghastly failure of the authorities to prepare and to rescue those at risk - is thought by some to have done more than physical damage.
Bill Clinton is among many eminent Americans who wonder whether Katrina's biggest impact might be psychological, political.
The real question - putting it baldly - is whether there is going to be a revolution.
Will the American social and economic system - which creates the wealth that pays for billionaires' private jets, and the poverty which does not allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans - be addressed?
It has been tinkered with before of course, sometimes as a result of natural disasters. There were for instance plenty of buses on hand for this week's Rita evacuation.
But the system's fundamentals - no limit on how far you can fly and little limit on how low you can fall - remain as intact as they were in the San Francisco gold rush.
'Infant welfare state'
In the book of From Our Own Correspondent dispatches that marks this programme's 50th anniversary, my illustrious predecessor, Charles Wheeler, wrote that one of the tragedies of the Vietnam War had been, as he put it, "the dismemberment of America's infant welfare state."
"The war", he said, "stopped social reform in its tracks and today, with the budget deficit huge and growing, there is no prospect that a windfall of money released by the war can suddenly be applied to the needs of the poor in the cities."
Charles was writing in 1973. The US did recover. The economy was rescued. Money was made in very large amounts. But the poor still did not receive that windfall and they were never going to.
Will my five-year-old daughter Martha - who wants to be a broadcaster, she says, because she likes shouting at people - be writing in 50 years time for the 100th anniversary edition of this programme that she lives in a workers' paradise; that the infant welfare state that Charles referred to has come to pass?
I doubt it.
Giving nature
My children attend the same school that Charles Wheeler's daughter Shereen graced in the early 1970s.
In the last few weeks my e-mail inbox has been filled with earnest messages from fellow parents about places we can give money to victims of Katrina, drop off teddy bears we no longer want, dispatch clothes for which we have grown too fat and so on.
No e-mail in those days of course, but I bet Charles got parchment scrolls, or whatever they used then, with lists of good causes to which he could contribute.
Charity is part of the warp and weft of American life and it is telling that Hurricane Katrina has encouraged an outpouring of giving on a scale never seen before.
Americans are cross with the government and disappointed with the response from Washington, but they have not sat on their hands and waited for the government to sort itself out. Much the opposite.
Americans have given with unbridled enthusiasm and generosity.
Is that not something governments do?
Americans do not think so and never will.
This is unquestionably a source of strength and spine in troubled times, but boy does it put a dampener on revolution.
Charity ameliorates it, softens blows, pours oil on troubled waters. It does not lead to social change.
Inequality is a part of American life and so is self reliance. Nothing I have seen in the last few weeks alters that.
American government is a mess. American bureaucracy and red tape is a national shame. American political clout around the world has been reduced by the Katrina fiasco.
But in Biloxi three weeks ago I watched a man with a chainsaw and two handguns beginning the process of rebuilding his house.
He will be joined by others after this weekend's devastation. They represent an America that Charles Wheeler would recognise instantly, and even now after the flood, is little changed.
musicman said:We just confuse the hell out of socialists, don't we? Of course, the fact that they appear so hell-bent on confusing themselves makes the job a little easier:
"Will the American social and economic system - which creates the wealth that pays for billionaires' private jets, and the poverty which does not allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans - be addressed?"
That statement is so wrong - so demonstrative of a complete lack of understanding of human nature - on so many levels - that I scarcely know where to begin. Let's start with the portion that is baldly, deliberately disingenuous.
The "fare" - or lack of - was never the issue, and the author knows it. After a lifetime of consuming the whimsy of liberal media, I know I should be able to laugh off its tendency to...how shall I put it...LIE. But I can't; it burns me up. The first line of defense in the event of natural disaster is local government, and all this local government knew how to do was collect votes and distribute welfare checks. Because of this criminal, hopelessly entrenched incompetence, people suffered and died, and that's the awful truth of it.
The more harmful, insidious lies, however, are the ones socialists tell THEMSELVES. Let's disabuse ourselves of some of liberalism's most cherished fables:
Wealth is not a zero/sum game. The poor people of New Orleans did not lack busses because billionaires have private jets. I'm not broke because Michael Jackson has money. The politics of envy is a detestable lie because it seeks to elevate a character flaw to the status of nobility. Envy is a weakness to be overcome, not a "just cause".
Bemoaning the fact that the poor don't receive some sort of "windfall" is destructive fantasy. If New Orleans didn't teach us that, nothing ever will. Generation after generation after generation of entitlement without self-determination leaves the recipient ungrateful to - and contemptutous of - the giver. Worse, it erodes the recipient's ability to do ANYTHING for himself. Why should he?
What made me the saddest of all, however, was the author's complete befuddlement at America's charitable spirit. It is completely at odds with his worldview; in fact, it actually ANGERS him a bit. How are people going to revolt and change the system when the blow of a natural disaster is being softened by human kindness? Damn!
Having swallowed whole the socialist utopian pipe-dream, he simply lacks the capacity to understand America. We are charitable and generous to a fault - if not COMPELLED to be.
musicman said:"Will the American social and economic system - which creates the wealth that pays for billionaires' private jets, and the poverty which does not allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans - be addressed?"
musicman said:Generation after generation after generation of entitlement without self-determination leaves the recipient ungrateful to - and contemptuous of - the giver.
